No Jumper - George Christie on Dropping Out of the Hells Angels, Banning Drive By Shootings & More

Episode Date: December 27, 2025

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No Jumber. Coolest podcast on the world. And today I got an epic conversation for y'all. I am sitting down with perhaps the most notorious, influential, you fill in the adjective, Hell's Angel, member, leader of all time. George Christie is on the podcast. Appreciate you having me here. And it's been interesting. I told my boy I was coming on here. I have a son that's 22 years old. Oh, really? Yeah, he knew immediately. Really? Yeah, yeah, he knew immediately what was up.

And what was his attitude about it? He goes, I remember what the hell I want to talk to you. I said, well, we're going to find out. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, I know. That's so trippy whenever I have anybody who's like kids are excited about it. Yeah, he, you know, he's a college student. He's one of these, does all these formulas.

I don't even know what he's doing, man. He's like a scientist. Oh, okay. That's good to hear. A lot of, I felt like you were about to tell. me that he was like a tick tocker or something. He's in college. He's calling for a doctorate.

He's a numbers guy. He comes up with all these formulas. He actually started doing him when he was about 15. He took him to school. And the instructors didn't know what he was doing. They thought maybe he made it up. He's high functioning autistic. Oh, okay.

So they thought maybe he made it up and they sent it over to college and the professor called me that night. And he goes, who taught him how to do this? And I said, well, he taught himself. Right. And he goes, he's a mathematician. Really? Yeah, and I kind of went, oh, well.

Wow. That's a trip. So you never felt terribly drawn to academics, or was that something pulling you towards it? I was dyslexic. And in high school, interesting thing happened to me. I took some sort of IQ test. I don't know what it was. It was 1964 or something like that.

And I got called into the office and accused of having the answer book, which I don't know what kind of test it was, but they thought that I had somehow got my hand on the answer book, and they wanted me to turn the answer book in before it got out with all the students, and they wouldn't be getting proper scores of what people were really. And I'm assuming you denied culpability? in this? I said, man, I don't know what you're talking about. I said, I took the test.

That's actually the day I decided to join the military. I went home that night. I told my mom and dad, I go, you know, I said, if this is polite society, I go, I don't want nothing to do with it. Really? Accused me of stealing the test and never even apologized. They had no proof of, you know, I left the office meeting with my parents and the position of the school was that I had stolen the test. Right. And they weren't able to prove it. This is they just felt strongly about it. No, and I didn't. Right.

If I had, I would have chalked it up to one of my accomplishments. I mean, that's a great feeling getting away with murder and being it, not literally, not literally murder. Any law enforcement watching, there's not actual murder, but it's a great feeling getting away with something. Well, I murdered that test. Yes, there you go, yeah. Yeah, you're like a rapper in that way. They're always talking about like, you know, I'm going to kill you and then when it really comes down to it. like well I was going to kill the microphone right yeah that's the excuse that you got always have in

your back pocket so you can say whatever your lawyer uh that's the kind of stuff your lawyer likes yeah definitely yeah life gets a lot trickier once you start having to think about what the lawyer would think yeah exactly or you wonder what would this sound like in a courtroom yes when you're talking on the phone yeah the first time i heard myself in a courtroom i was like yeah jesus man or when you start thinking about what your wife would think about every conversation then you all now you have all these different filters running at the same time and you sort of realize how your parents ended up a little bit weird because you know you're 12 saying whatever pops into your head all of a sudden you're 40 and you got all these different filters going yeah that's true um when i'm reading

about your story and kind of like a big picture macro sense it feels like incredibly uh it feels like an incredibly important part of the change that was taking place in america as a whole between you know the 50s the 60s the 70s and like as a adult being able to really look at that and see how much our culture was changing during that time period you know you go from the 50s where it's kind of like everybody's sort of dressing the same to by the time you get to well into the 60s and 70s it's like our culture had just been flipped on its head and and rebellion and independent it's being you know unique had just become like the dominant style aisle at the time. And it's pretty remarkable how much America had changed over the course of 10, 20 years there. I can remember the mid-50s, and I remember getting under the school desk, you know, to get away from the shrapnel of the glass that this era of fear from the atomic blast. Yeah. I mean, you know, how does that affect you on a subconscious level? Well, here I am. Really, so you can draw a straight line between that and your eventual rebellion against Polack society? I think there was a, a, uh, a

of things. I think discovering my family was poor. I remember we went to a Bob's Big Boy. And I don't know, it's way before your time. I remember Bob's Big Boy created a chain and they were coming out here in Southern California near Disneyland. And kept seeing those Bob Big boys on every corner, a big sign and whatnot. And I told my mom, dad, I got to have a big I got to have a big boy. So we pulled in the parking lot, and my dad did something that he'd never done before. He took the seats out of the car. And we were looking on the floorboard for change that had fallen.

I thought it was really cool that we were kind of like on a treasure hunt and come from a traditional Greek family, both sides. My mom and dad start talking Greek, and I realized there's people watching us. and I thought the people were laughing with us and I figured out they were laughing at us for taking the seats out of the car going through the big dust balls underneath the seats trying to find 19 cents for a Bob's Big Boy burger

that's what they cost. So we came up with enough for one burger and a cup of coffee, my mom and dad split and really left me pissed off and my initial thought was I went back to the first outlawed biker I had seen probably six months earlier. Right. In San Fernando Valley, we were actually down here.

And I don't know if he was a Hell's Angel, a saint and slave, coffin cheater. Could have been any one of those clubs. But he pulled up to a stop sign. And the impact it had on the people around us was just amazing. Everybody was pissed, scared. The guy talking to my dad, spit on the ground, looked at me and said, That's your America. Wow.

And I thought, okay. That's my bad ass right. I don't know exactly what it means, but I like this guy's style. You know, metaphorically, I jumped on the back of that motorcycle with this guy, and I took off. That was probably 1956, 55, 57. It took me 10 years, and I finally got a Harley. I bought a Harley in 1966. Right.

Bought the whole thing. I can't even remember now. I don't know if it was 250. or 200. I think it was 250. You can't even get your bike service for that. I bought the whole complete 57 panhead, Harley Davidson. Right.

And it's probably hard for a lot of people to comprehend just how rebellious this was to like choose to live your life that way at that time because this was kind of like the first real era of counterculture in America. Well, and you know, you've got these guys coming back veterans from the Pacific theater, the European theater, perhaps suffering from undiagnosed PTSD, you know, and these guys come back, they're displaced, and they got to start over, man, and they're used to all this action, they're used to this brotherhood, and what do they do? They form all these little motorcycle clubs here in Southern California, and it kind of comes to a head in Hollister. I think it was

48, I'm not sure, 47 or 4, I think 48, and the San Francisco Chronicle, a reporter up there and he sees all these motorcycle club guys, you know, the booze fighters, the 13 rebels, the pissed off bastards, these are the different small bike clubs, does a story, puts it out over the AP and everybody picks up on it. Hollister Riot outlaw motorcycles. So they go to the modified, excuse me, the American Motorcycle Association, the AMA, and they asked for a sound bite from them. So what do you say to these outlaws?

And they said, well, it's only 1% that ruin it for us, wholesome riders. And that was kind of the birth of the 1% or outlaw bike perception. Right. Definitely. And so, okay, you joined the Hells Angels in what year? Or what year do you start really hanging out? Well, 1960s, I started hanging out with the question marks. Okay.

They were a 1% club endorsed by the Hells Angels. From there, there was some things that happened. Dick Woods, the leader, wound up having, he got stabbed. And partially paralyzed, and the club kind of lost this momentum. And they introduced me to a club in San Fernando Valley called the Saint Slaves. And they were kind of the sultans of Southern California, if you will. And, you know, even the Hells Angels kind of held these guys in all. Right.

Hung out with them and ultimately I met the Los Angeles, Hells Angels. It was a guy, old man John, who was an old man back in the late 60s, early 70s. Was the Hells Angels brand solidified in the same way at that time? It was already carried that level of... The power base had been in San Bernardadino. And what happened was it shifted to the Bay Area. and I got to credit one individual, Sonny Barger, became the face and the voice of the Hells Angels.

And so you said that you've done podcasts with him? No. No, okay, because I searched for it. Well, I'll tell you what I did. Okay. I went on a publicity tour in, I think it was 81 or 83. We wound up in Dallas, Texas, and I did a radio talk show. and it's kind of funny, this may be what you're referring to,

because I think it's floating around there on the internet. Oh, okay. But the interviewer was sarcastically saying, we're going to take a break now, and the Hells Angels are going to beat their wives until we come back, and Sonny took it literally. He was saying we beat our women. And so that may be what you're referring to.

But, you know, we did something on the History Channel, but that wasn't until 1999. We were on the History Channel together in search of the Los Angeles. Right, definitely. And I mean, okay, so what would you say? Like, you were kind of drawn to the just natural, rebellious nature of the motorcycle crew lifestyle.

But, like, when you actually became part of it, how would you describe what the culture was like at that time? Like, you know, it's obviously changed a lot as the years went by, but at that time, what was it like? And how much were you cognizant? of the fact that you are essentially hanging out with a bunch of people who were, you know, probably involved in crime to various extents? Well, you get introduced to it slowly, and I don't think that's intentional.

You know, the club is not a criminal organization, but it's an organization that criminals are drawn to it. Right. And so if you're asking me, the transition, you know, it was over several years. When you become a target of law enforcement, you find ways to survive. Yeah. And perhaps, you know, I always tell people don't confuse the outlaw and the criminal. But sometimes outlaws are drawn to criminality to survive. Yeah, it occurs to me that's a pretty fuzzy line.

It is. If you're an outlaw, you're kind of acknowledging that you're down to break the law, that this is like a necessary component of your getting by. You have your own morality. But you're not a criminal who's in the sense that you're like plotting on how you're going to rob the next bank. No, you're not a working criminal, if you will. Right. But, you know, when I walked into the outlaw motorcycle world in the 66, 67, it was a live and let live type society.

And I think the more police interest in us, law enforcement interest in us, the more structured we became and the more cautious we became. When you became part of it, would you say that the Hells Angels were in direct opposition to the hippies? Or was it almost grown out of that? Well, probably depend what charter you hung out with up in the San Francisco area. And that's how I met the Grateful Dead and became friends with them is through the, what we call it. They were kind of a bohemian personality to it. the Oakland charter was a blue collar type charter. You know, if you look on the internet, you can see

Sonny was against the war protesters and whatnot. You know, he had beaten up, taking the Oakland members and beating up some war protesters at one time. And then, you know, Alan Ginsberg went and had to sit down with him. You know, the poet, Alan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they resolved something.

I know that my relationship with, the Grateful Dead was everybody has a place in society. That's Jerry Garcia's philosophy, which, who he was kind of the, you know, spokesman for the Grateful Dead. Maybe I don't think he really wanted it, but it was kind of put on him. He became a spokesman for that movement in a sense, the San Francisco music movement. Yeah. Yeah.

Because, I mean, I feel like nowadays we would be likely to classify the Hells Angels or anyone associated with that kind of lifestyle as being. like more right wing associated, whereas it's like kind of interesting because going back that far, it felt like it was almost more of this sort of peace and love, like hippie type movement, but then it was like almost a reaction to that because it was a much more violent and wild scene. Well, you know, the Friscoe guys hung around with Ken Kesey and, you know, he wrote one flew over the cuckoo's and ass. Yeah.

You know, he was in that whole Kool-Aid acid trip movement. And, you know, you had people from other charters coming to San Francisco wanting to be part of that scene because it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of party and then whatnot. But Frisco was the Bohemian charter, and I would describe Oakland as the blue collar charter. Right. So the club had a yen and a yang, if you will. I don't know year-wise when it would have been, but there was this TV segment that I landed on while I was. researching you where they have Hunter S. Thompson on a TV set.

Skip. Yeah. So that's that guy's name, Skip. So there's so many things going on in this video that would never happen in modern times. Skip circling him. He brings the motorcycle in in a closed room and is. There's an audience. Yeah, hundreds of people in there.

And so that in and of itself is amazing. Like, holy shit, all these people are breathing in the toxins from this bike. That's kind of incredible in its own, right? And then they are joking around. about beating your wife in a way that you could never fathom in this day and age. You know, it's interesting you say that I was on a, I did secrets of the Hells Angels on the A&E station a while back. And I wound up renaming it not so many secrets of the Hells Angels because, you know,

it just kind of rejuvenated, regurgitated everything that had been on before. But I got in an argument with a woman in Washington, state of Washington. And she was some, I did one of these publicity things where you do like 30 interviews and three hours or something. And she referenced that. Yeah. So you guys think it's funny. And I, you know, I certainly dug in. And I said, well, I said, I'd like to compare the ratio between hell's angels beating their wives and law enforcement beating their wives.

And she got pissed, man. She didn't want to talk about it. Wow. She kind of moved to the next subject. But no, you're absolutely right. And what's amazing is Skip with a smile on his face says, well, every once in a while, they need it. Yeah. And the audience applauds and laughs, yeah, which kind of really tells you where the world was at at that time.

And really how far society has come, you know? Shout out to all the women out there. This is the deal. We got a president that has 34 felonies. Yeah. So, you know, what does that say? You know, what are people, are people not buying in to this law enforcement? There's a lot of bullshit out there.

You know, I've been indicted three times, have been to a federal prison twice, state prison. Well, it wasn't in the prison. I was in the jail waiting to go to prison once. I had a 59 count state racketeering charge at that time, collapsing under its own weight. In 1986, took a case, a federal case, set out of order some. somebody's murder. I took it all the way, you know, through the jury, found not guilty, proved that the feds had set me up. Five times you got found not guilty right before you finally

went down? Well, yeah, no, not five, a lot of investigations. You know, I can't even kept track of them. Right. I don't know how much money local law enforcement got from the federal government. You know, they get these federal grants. Yeah. They team up with the ATF, like the local cops were teaming up with the ATF so they could use the Patriot Act so they didn't have to get warrants to listen to us and whatnot. This is after the Twin Towers. But, you know, never went to prison for anything I did. Right. You know, I went to prison because someone was trying to extract themselves from a legal situation. And, you know, I was a get out of jail free card for him. Right. Definitely. So, okay, you, so you, so you, officially,

joined in 1976 and within six months you had risen to be the president of your chapter. Correct. What was it about you that you were able to, you know, have that much of influence on a group of guys who realistically probably prize seniority in large part, right? Absolutely. And I was in my 20s. I got voted in as vice president. And old man, John liked what I was doing.

He stepped aside and I became the president of Los Angeles, Hells Angels. In fact, our clubhouse wasn't far from here. brought back a lot of memories today, getting off the freeway. Yeah, because we go out to Ventura sometimes when we want to go to a dog-friendly beach. Right. Because you can bring your dogs up there and they won't give you a hard time about it, which is, that's our main reason that we go up there. And then from time to time, I'll read about, you know, whether old Hell's Angels type stuff or I hear about gang activity going on out there. I'm like, damn, it seems totally fine when I go out there.

No, there's some of that stuff. I mean, we had kind of a moratorium on. And, you know, I know that down here, the street gangs, the Emmy, the Mexican mafia, put a moratorium on that. They said, you know, no more these drive-by shooting does not stop. And you guys did the same thing. We did the same thing in Ventura. Yeah. He said, that's it.

None of this stuff going on. And, you know, it's really interesting because the old cops, they were all for it. You know, their attitude was, anyway, we can get the job done. We can keep the public safe. The young cops were offended. They said the Hells Angels need to keep their nose out of our business. Well, you know, the street is the Hells Angels business. Right.

And that's the way we perceived it. So what was your perspective on like all of the Mexican and black street gangs that were running L.A. or running Southern California in comparison to the Hells Angels? Did you look at them as like direct competition that you need to be worried about? Or was that their own thing until the drive-by thing starts to become a trend? I think it was their own thing. Yeah. I think that, you know, I remember one night I turned the wrong way and I wound up down in South Central.

And, you know, some gang members came up to me. I think, what are you doing down here, man? I go, I think I took a wrong turn. He goes, you did, you know, and they told me how to get out of there. But they were cool, you know. I don't think we were a threat to him. You know, I don't know if we were down there cutting in on their business, it probably would have been a different posture. You know, who knows?

Yeah. I mean, hypothetical stuff's hard to... Yeah, and I mean, that is the crazy thing about the gang world is that in large part, you know, people kill each other, their own race. People worry about their own... The guy living down the street, they're less likely to be worried about, like, you know, another race. Well, I think, you know, that's an interesting point, and I think it brings up the subject to...

I got a new book coming out, and... In the book, you probably count up how many... Hell's Angel deaths were attributed to in-house. That's the way law enforcement always refers to an in-house cleanings as to fighting with the outlaws or the banditos or the Mongols or whatever club we happen to be. So you're saying Hells Angels killed each other more? I think so.

Yeah. I mean, that's with the record. It's a lot of it's speculation because, you know, nobody's talking, nobody's testifying. That's funny because the Roland 60s have that reputation. Or they say that. That's like the biggest street gang in L.A. Right. I'm familiar with that.

But they always say you're not a real 60 until you kill another 60, which, like, various members have had to clarify that they don't. That's not an official policy. Right. That's just an assumption because so much of that has taken place. Let me ask you this. Who makes that assumption? I think just people who watch, well, okay, by virtue of being the biggest neighborhood,

they also are going to have the most infighting, you know? I'll show you something. See that tattoo? Pay here. Yeah, that tattoo was a joke. You know? Where do you get that? I don't know.

Mid-70s. Survived pretty good. Usually those hand tattoos go away pretty quick. Law enforcement said in order to, I had a bunch of new guys join the club in the 90s. And I had this tattoo. Another member had this tattoo. There were three of us that got it together. And they were, is in right.

a police report. You get this tattoo because you make a million dollar drug deal. You have to make a million dollar drug deal and get it approved to get this tattoo. That's what they said. That's what they say. Really? And it's bullshit. And you had never even heard of that. No, I was like, first time I heard about it was in 2002, when I had a 59 count state racketeering charge against me. Right. I was like, hey, here is a million dollar drug deal? Right. But, you know, somebody makes that up. puts it in a report and perhaps six months down the road bus somebody that has this tattoo. And he says, well, the criteria for that tattoo is a million-dollar drug deal. And that helps his career.

But, you know, what these law enforcement guys don't realize when they do this stuff, they put up the person street credit as well. You know, I developed a relationship with. the Mexican Mafia, specifically Mike Eisen, who was, his name was Acha. And if you look him up, he's all over the internet. He was a high-ranking Mexican Mafia guy. Him and I developed a relationship. I initially didn't even know who he was.

And, you know, we became close friends. And they did an article in the newspaper about me and Mike Eisen. And, like, talk about street cred going up, you know. Suddenly, I had a connection to the Mexican Mafia. real or imagined was in writing, so it's there. I'm sure people say stuff about you, you know, speculate. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know that. So you can relate to what I'm saying, because you go on a lot of shows and you start getting into discussion with the host, and he's looking at you like, I'm not connecting with you on this, man. I don't get this. Perhaps because he's never

leftist studio. I don't know. You know what I'm saying? No, yeah. I mean, you go into a lot of walks of life where you're having conversations with people and you very quickly realize like, oh, they haven't been through shit. They don't know about shit. They ain't really, you know, like I've got a lot more experience and I'm going to have

to kind of like, you know, dumb down my commentary about this. I've had that example with like, you know, other family friends of like my kid and stuff. She's five. So it's like, you know, we're hanging out with other families and stuff. And it's like, they'll see something on YouTube or whatever and realize like, you know, oh, you, you interviewed that guy a week ago and then, you know, he died in a hail of bullets a week later. Like, doesn't that freak you out?

And I'm like, I mean, at this point, not so much. You know, I feel a lot of empathy for him and his family. But at this point, I'm very used to these circumstances. You know, my attitude has always been people talk about this happens, that happens. Like, you know, you join an outlaw motorcycle club. You know what you're signing up for. Right. It's not a group of monks, you know, meditating up on the mount in Ventura by the cross.

You know, it is what it is. Have you noticed about yourself throughout your life that you have a higher than average risk tolerance? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think that's required for this lifestyle. You know, it's funny. I had a comic that I became, I'm not going to. I've mentioned his name, but I became friends with. And he told me, goes, you know, guys like you were wired different.

You know, he goes, we're, you know, the average guy's not wired like that. To me, it's just, you know, part of my personality that was developed, but, you know, it goes back to what we initially started talking about, getting under the desk because the atomic blast is coming, you know? I mean, you're kind of like, you know, I'm going to enjoy myself because I might not be here tomorrow. And then as things change, you adapt. You know, you mentioned to me, how did you become a leader so early? You know, I had a background in the Marines. I don't know if you knew I worked for the Department of Defense.

Right, yeah. I worked for them until I found out I was leader of the Hells Angels in Los Angeles. Oh, even back then, that wasn't. They took my security clearance. Really? Yeah, they go, you can't have a security clearance, man. We can't send you out to Santa Cruz. Cruz Island to the RCA building because I took care of the submarine surveillance system when

we were in the Cold War with Russia. The guy goes, it's just not acceptable. Yeah. And so I walked. No, definitely. Just like a side question. Have you changed enough to the point where you don't feel any desire to, like, you know, retaliate against somebody in a situation on the street?

Like, just a hypothetical, you're at the gas station, you're filling up your car. and some guy says, hey, dickhead, you know, somebody insults your manhood real quick. Right. You got it, didn't you, did just walk away? Are you still? No, okay. No. No.

My wife's laughing. I heard her chuckle over there. No, no, I don't. You know, I wish I did, but it's not my composition. It's like, what the fuck did you say? Right. You know, and what's your problem, man? Because I never, you know,

look for trouble. I know for insult people. I'm always humorous, got a good attitude about things. You know, I walk around every day. You know, I try to do 10,000 steps a day. You know, I walk around with my little Jack Russell dog. I mean, I've got to look like an old man.

I'm almost 80 years old. You know, check that old man out. Right. But, you know, I still am a man. Definitely. But do you have it in you to not let it go the whole way if it came down to it? I'm sure with your criminal history, probably not supposed to be carrying a firearm.

No, I do not, I don't have access to firearms. But, you know, sometimes I carry a couple of knives. Yeah. I still carry knives. Yeah. I have a big knife collection. And when they take away your gun rights, you gravitate, you know, towards the knives. I got a martial arc background, start studying knives with some guys I thought were pretty handy

with bladed weapons. Right. Because when you learn about like the streets of England and shit, you realize that these dudes are rolling around with giant knives on them and shit. And it's like a super serious crime. And you'll see a video with dudes just dropping dead in the middle of a street fight because they get their juggler slash. I think that that knives is more popular weapon in England.

Yeah, but they can barely get guns. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, it's like here guns, you know, I remember as I got indoctrinated into the club, you know, I found out we're getting ready to go to war with the Mongols. This thing was brewing for months. And, you know, we had an armory, what we called, in the middle of downtown L.A. You know, had 2,000 pounds of dynamite machine guns.

We had a British anti-tank rifle in there. It's like the size of a car, you know. And I was like, I don't know why we have all. issue. But I mean, that was a big transition, right? Because like in the early days of the motorcycle scene or whatever. Right and party. And you would fight, but it would be in a

You know, I did a post this morning on my social media about the coffin cheaters and the Hells Angels. Big Al from Oakland, a real famous Hells Angel from the 60s and 70s comes down. The coffin cheaters find out he's in town. They got a problem. They show up at the

bar. The St. Slal the claves, the cop and cheaters, and the hells angels all fight. And at the end of the night, they all went and had breakfast together. Mm. You know, it was just, they didn't go home and get guns or bullets or whatever. It was in the fight, took your lumps, and the loser usually bought breakfast. Yeah, because it's like, that's an area that you're describing where everything is kind of, you know, able to be kept copacetic at the end of the day is so quaint in comparison to so much of the stuff that we see now,

where you see teenagers who basically, you know, disrespect each other on social media until the point where they got to go shoot each other. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, what's the point? What are they really, you know, proven? I get a kick out of these, you know,

you watch some of these police shows, like 48 hours. I mean, these guys are killing each other left and right. Oh, yeah. He burned me for a $10 bag of dope. Yeah. He called my sister a dirty name, you know. Yeah. starts a personal feud between them.

Yeah. And I see it up close and personal a lot of times with these rappers where it's like they end up in these blood feuds as a result of the fact that somebody, you know, somebody makes a song where they insult somebody's dead friend. Right. Or they, you know, we'll make an Instagram video where they go to somebody's candlelight vigilant, kick the candles over or some shit like that. Like the extremely disrespectful shit, like intended to be the kind of thing that nobody's

ever going to be able to get over. You're not going to be able to just move past that. But, you know, I try to not buy into that. I know there's a guy, he's got a small YouTube channel, and he had a guy that was a former Ventura Hells Angel. And the guy, you know, he disrespected me. So I just basically explained what I saw really happen from my perspective. You know, now the guy, it's like he wants to get in this verbal battle, you know, my attitude

is, you know, come over to my house. If you got a problem, man. Right. I, you know, I'm not going to get into a rap battle with you. Yeah, but I mean, really, people end up with these sort of sick relationships with public figures because of the fact that they know that talking about that person is really like the, I guarantee that guy, you're probably the number one person he can talk about in order to get views on his content.

I think you're absolutely correct. And if it wasn't the case, if you were number eight on the list, then he'd probably be talking about somebody else, but you're pretty much up there. So as a result, this is the world that he lives in. He's got to commentate on and critique and probably as soon as this interview drops, and I don't know who the other you're talking about, but probably he'll be watching this interview just waiting

for that moment where you slip up and say something a little that could be skewed. Doesn't have to be you saying if you're wrong, but you could skew it and make it seem like a lie. Boom, we're in business. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like I identified somebody as a government witness in my case. And he got, you know, he was a guest on his show and I made a comment. He should have,

you know, the host should have researched that he was actually interviewing a government witness. He didn't know it. Right. You know, so, look, the world has changed. It's, you know, it's like 50 cent and Pete Diddy, fighting it out on Netflix, man. I just saw that. Yeah, you got, you got an enemy that you hate more than anybody in the world. So you get a multi- million dollar streaming deal with the biggest streaming platform to produce a four-hour piece of and i don't know if it's fair to call it propaganda but for sure it's like on the cusp you know because there are some things said in that documentary that really stood out to people like in particular they said that puffy didn't pay for biggie's funeral that puff daddy made biggie's family and

his own account pay for the funeral which is already like massively contested people are already coming out to say this is not true but it's in that that documentary so it might as well be true yeah it's not going to change because testimony yeah you know when in 2011 i got died in 2001 and uh i was in solitary confinement isolated from they had a protective order i couldn't talk to anybody uh about anything and had the twin towers and uh it was like the whole world changed i i didn't know what transpired you know my wife and I were talking about it a couple of weeks ago. We went to New York.

We went to the memorial. And I was looking at all these films, things I never saw before. And it was so, it impacted me so much and it was so profound. It's like, it changed the world. Yeah. It changed the world. You know, you've got a bunch of guys living in caves attacking the United States, man. And 95% of America agreed that we should invade Afghanistan at that moment,

which is probably like the most united that America has ever been on anything. Yeah. But anyways, what I'm leading up to is I watched not only the world unravel, I kind of watched what I felt the outlawed bike culture started unraveling. Really? Why do you say that?

Because we had a policy in the past like you're a hell's angel leader, you get indicted. You don't lose your position until we know whether you're getting sentenced and if you're going to go to prison then you step down, somebody else steps in. We don't want law enforcement

dictating who is in charge and who isn't in charge because and indict that guy because we'll try to maneuver our guy into that lead position and we'll have an inside source. But, you know, I had someone try to take one of my businesses. I had someone go for my job.

You know, if they were going to do that, stuff. I mean, it's human nature, but at least wait until I get convicted. I was like, I came home, you know, and I walked back into that world. And I, you know, the first meeting I went to, it was horrendous, you know, confronted these different people. One of the guys had been convicted of a double homicide bombing at one time. I mean, these are serious guys that were making moves on me. and I started having second thoughts about things, re-evaluating things. And by 2009, 2010, I was thinking, we've become the people who rebelled against. And I wanted to kind of get back to the route.

So I quit the club. You know, I walked into the meeting. And perhaps I shouldn't have expressed myself in the manner which I did because I was very, very blunt. I said, look, man, we're fighting wars on five fronts. Throw the cops in there, that's six fronts. I go, what's the point, man? You know, these are wars. They have no destination.

Like, would you get on a terrain with no destination? I wouldn't. No. And so I said, look, we'd become the people we're rebelled against. And I took my patch off. I didn't even see anybody in the room that I wanted to give it to. I laid it on the table. And it was like a 15-foot.

walked to the door and i'll tell you it was the longest walk i ever took in my life i was no longer a hell's angel i just pissed off 40 years of my life uh in a sense yeah and immediately i left in good standing uh my status had immediately changed by sunday barger to bad standing then the character assassinations started i mean just prior to my quitting i was in a meeting hell's angel meeting officers meeting supposed to be the toughest most hardcore outlaw motorcycle guys in the world. And I'm arguing with another officer from another charter because I won't defriend somebody on Facebook.

Yeah, at that moment, when I heard you say that in another interview was the moment where I was like, oh, like this sort of much older generation of tough guys and gangsters are really like kind of involved with all the same shit that affects, you know, the teenage TikTok crap. He was a guy that was my age. Yeah. And, you know, he wanted me to defend someone.

I go, this is, I said, do you know how ridiculous this sounds? I go, we're actually going to put this in the minutes. Yeah. And, you know, but anyways, I made a decision, and I'm happy with it. I've done a lot of things since I left the club. You know, I was wondering, is their life after the Hells Angels, you know, for a lot of people that isn't. Yeah. And it's kind of a crash and burn existence, you know, to lay OD or, you know, they run into a brick wall on their motorcycle or something.

But, you know, I've kind of got a whole new world going for myself. So do you still spend time on a motorcycle or no? I do. Okay. I have a motorcycle. I've got two hip replacements. I've got a sidecar on it. And, you know, my wife Beverly gets in it with our dog, Fonzie.

And we go all up and down, Southern California. We haven't gone cross-country in it yet, and I'm not sure I will at, you know, 80 years old. Yeah. I don't know if I'm ready to ride across country. I'm going to push it that far, yeah. We were going to go to Sturgis last year. Oh, yeah? At the last minute, we kind of came to our census, and our family was really glad.

Wow. We said we weren't going. You ever been to New Hampshire? To the Laconia. Yeah. That's where I'm from around there, yeah. Okay, well, you know, I was going to go there. I had planned on going there.

And we got in a fight with the cops one year. Really? Several people wound up doing about 18 months. They got beefed and kind of lost interest. I mean, it's funny because my mom is from Laconia. I'm from Nashua, which is maybe an hour away. Where? Nashville, it's kind of like the...

I said Nashville. No, yeah, people are, yeah. But it's like the southernmost part of New Hampshire, Laconia, you have to drive up there a bit to get to it. But I recall being like really young. And my grandma had a... neighbor who was like the most white trash dude i ever seen in my life you know what you got a wife beater he's got teeth sticking out of her angle out of his face if i had to guess was probably doing meth or whatever was the drug at the time you know and then i have like another memory of like

soon after that going up to see my grandma and it's like the biker weekend and they're everywhere and i remember feeling like kind of the same thing that you're saying about seeing a a real deal biker in real life and realizing that this was something that you really wanted to be a part of. And I remember that, but it didn't connect enough to be like, I want to do that. But it was more just the energy. I was just like, oh, I like that. That's the kind of guy that I'm interested. You know, here's an example.

We're in a gas station in, you know, 1967, you know, three or four of us pull in and everybody locks their doors and rolls their windows up, grabs their kids. And we're laughing, you know, we think it's funny. Yeah. You know, 15 years later, you pull in the gas station that happens, you're thinking, these guys are potential jurors. And, you know, it kind of throws a different spin in it, you know. And this is, law enforcement creates the paranoia.

You know, you've got guys now that are flipping, you know. You got a guy that used to cook crank and he gets 18 months, has his $4 million stashed, and he does his time and comes home, you know, now they're going. okay, you're looking at 40 years, but we could get you out of here if we could get a little help. And they cut these deals, man. Right. And I mean, I feel like that's probably a transition that your world is kind of going through that sort of mirrors the rap world where snitching has become so much more normalized. You see a lot of people who, like, in a previous era, maybe like them telling would have been enough for them to not even be invited on platforms and all.

of a sudden now everybody wants to talk to them people just aren't are you referring to somebody specifically in hip hop yes for sure we got a whole bunch of different examples of people I mean it's always every every snitch story is a little different it's always a little bit hard to ascertain exactly how awful their sins were but is that that's a similar situation I think in your world where I love this absolutely you know it's it's and we had a guy I'm sitting in a meeting with a guy and I go away in 86 I get This federal beep that said I ordered a murder of an informant. I come back in 87.

I'm in a meeting. I'm sitting next to this guy. And I'm wondering, how did he rise to the West Coast sergeant at arms? I always thought he was a lame. He's got a brand new cast on. And he's asking me these provocative questions. He's bringing up provocative subjects that he shouldn't be bringing up in an official meeting. and he's got a bug in his cast I'll find out later.

Yeah. And he's trying to prompt me into, he's asking me permission to go blow these guys up that we're already at war with. In my subconscious, I'm thinking, you don't need my permission, man. You want to blow these guys up, go blow them out. Morally, that may not be correct,

but, you know, I'm not going to break a law and tell him to go blow these guys up. But a lot of that stuff doesn't really need to be said so explicitly. And it definitely doesn't need to be reiterated later on. No, you know, it's like I met a lot of old mob guys. First time I went to prison, Sam Serentino was an underboss. You know, these guys used to, I sit around with them.

Michael Frenchese and I and Rosario Gambino. You ever heard of The Pizza Connection? No. Big mafia deal in the 80s. Okay. All a heroin. They were responsible for all the heroin in the United States. I was in prison with him, you know, Sam Saratino.

other mob guys. You know, these guys, they would look at each other and have conversations. They're just old school gangsters, man. You know, they didn't sit out there and just overtly make these cavalier statements. And I think that as the Hells Angels became educated as to how low some of these cops will go. Look, there's a lot of decent cops out there. I've got friends I consider, and they're cops. Got other people out there, man.

You know, they'll break the law to enforce the law. Those are the guys you have to worry about. Right. Well, I mean, it's probably easier for you to have a good relationship with cops now that you're not breaking the law day and day, all right? You know, Beverly and I walk around, we ran into a judge a while back, you know, like I said, no hard feelings, right, George? And, you know, no, no hard feelings. It's just all, you know, to me, if they weren't coming after me, I figured they were slippery. And if I wasn't on guard, I was looking.

But can you imagine an alternative universe in which the outlaw biker world had not gotten the level of scrutiny from law enforcement that you did and in which you were able to sort of cultivate a little bit of a different image? Or was the outlaw branding inevitably going to land you with that amount of attention? I got to be honest. I think everybody, not just the hells Angeles, the outlaws, the mom. the Bengals, the banditos. There was a time when everybody embraced that kind of outlawed gangster vision. I'm sure just liking rap music. You know, rap music started off in a particular manner and, you know, kind of ranced off.

Because if you really want to sell an image to people, the people who are buying, they want to see the extreme version of it. They want to see the violent version of it. The same way, if you're a young, up-and-coming. Republican politician and you want to make a name for yourself. You're not going to get anybody paying attention to you if you just say, hey, crime is bad. Right. But if you say, I'm sick of these black people committing all these crimes. Right.

All right. Now they're talking about you. And I see this pattern over and over and over where the people are drawn to the hyperbolic. And, you know, the more intense, the more extreme you can make things, the more you're going to be able to make people pay attention to you. And so now our culture is just entirely full of people who are willing to sort of break through that wall. Now, you know, on the other hand, now I'll give you an example.

There was a war going on in the Nordic, called a great Nordic biker war in the Scandinavian countries. And the Hells Angels and the banditos were fighting it out over there. I mean, a serious fight. Now, these guys have rockets. They're shooting in each other's clubhouses. They have automatic weapons. They have pistols.

They have hand grenades. Where do you suppose they got all these? things. You tell me. Well, I was shocked when I found out, each town has a militia. And at the edge of town is an armory that has a small single padlock on it. And these guys were cutting the locks off these armories and taking the stuff. These guys were shooting rockets into each other's clubhouses, had a shootout in the international airport in Denmark. Yeah. So they reach a point in time. they know that I'm flying to Europe. I'm trying to resolve this.

I'm dealing with the banditos out of Texas who run the banditos. And why are you even invested in solving it? Because I don't want the war bleeding over into the United States. We're already fighting the Mongols, and we're fighting the outlaws. And we have an on and off relationship with the banditos at the time. So I fly to Europe. I go to Amsterdam, call a meeting. everybody in Europe shows up at the meeting

and I never forget the meeting I go there and I'm trying to be the voice of reason and I'm saying this and I mean this is you know we have to put our differences behind us and you have to follow history and you know all wars come to an end and you know things are resolved one of the I don't know what charter he was from he looks like a big Viking you know he's 6-6

which you'd think a hell's angel looks like. He stands up, you know, we are going to kill every bandito in Europe. You know, and I'm going, you're not going to kill every bandito in Europe. I've been fighting the Mongols and the outlaws for 10 years. Yeah. You're not going to just genocide them out of existence. No, it's ridiculous. So anyways, Scandinavian government gets word that George Weggar's leader of the banditos and myself are negotiating.

He's making trips to Europe. I'm making trips to Europe. We're not going together. we're going separately talking to our people. The Scandinavian government petitions our government to issue special visas for leader of the banditos in Europe's gentleman named Tom. His last name escapes me. And Hell's Angel, both these guys are felons.

Blondie, who represents our club, I don't know his real name. I can't remember it. Blondie had killed two people in daylight, walked up to him and shot him. in one of the streets in Denmark. They are allowed special visas. They come over, and Bandito George and myself up in Spokane, Washington, host a meeting to resolve this. And they go back and shows you how the governments are different.

They go back and they televise the peace negotiations. Really? And there's a one of, I don't know what you call, She's either a congresswoman or like a senator. I don't know what her position is, some sort of empowerment or something. She's there, the lawyer's there, and Blondie's there, and Jim's there,

and they're shaking hands, it's all televised. The war is over. And I think that shows that the government, governments are willing to compromise when it benefits them. And we all know this. Yeah. But I kind of got off on a tangent.

No, but I mean, that level of international diplomacy, the fact that through your role with the angels that you were like expected or that you just rose up and took it upon you. I was a little disappointed where there wasn't some, you know, Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, yeah, honestly, that would be fair. I mean, people do talk like that about like, you know, there's some infamous L.A. like, gang rivalries that kind of ended

after like many decades of war. Right. And, I mean, yeah, people. People make YouTube videos celebrating the people who are able to kind of get those truces done. Do you think that the motorcycle world, like, is talking about the idea of them having unity? Is that as absurd sounding as the idea of like all the L.A. street gangs having unity? Like, could you ever see a path towards that or is it just unrealistic? I think it's unrealistic.

You know, I had a pretty good run. I had almost 10 years, a moratorium of no violence where you could really ride across the United States without a, bulletproof vest on. And then, you know, it's slowly deteriorated because what happens is people with different agendas get into positions of leadership and power. There was a Harry Bowman, if you look it up on the Internet, United States of America versus Harry Taco Bowman. Taco was the head of the outlaws.

He was an international leader of the outlaws. And he started getting pressure. from a younger member named Spike. And I mean, I had developed a real close relationship with Taco close enough where he called me up on the phone and said, these peace talks are unraveling, George. He goes, I'm getting a lot of pressure. People think I'm weak.

He goes, what are people saying about you? I said the same thing. I go, being in a position of peace and a warring culture, it's not popular, man. You know, people use that against you. Your political adversaries use it against you. And he goes, well, I don't know what's going to happen, man. I think that's going to unravel.

And it did. You know, I put a murder contract on me. It came to Ventura to kill me for whatever reason. They didn't follow through. They didn't come just once. They came twice. But you can look it up online to actually talk about they were going to target Sunny Barger or me, and then they decided to target me.

But most of these leaders, Taco, you know, he died in prison. They're racketeering. You know, he petitions for a compassionate leave. He's got cancer. He's dying. Their attitude, let him die here in prison, man. Yeah. George Weggard's the leader of the banditos.

He passed. The new leader takes his place. He's doing life. Jeff Pite, he's doing life. I mean, these are guys that I knew and I were friends with. And, you know, Beverly and I talk about it. where would I wound up if I would have stayed in? Would I be doing life somewhere?

Would I be dead? Yeah. I mean, you don't know. Once you become a target of the government, you know, or a target of somebody that takes exception to what you're doing, I mean, look at this Charlie Kirk. I mean, I don't know, really, and I'm not going to say anything good about him.

I'm not going to say anything negative about him. Right. You know, but, you know, the guy became a target, man. But with that situation, you're kind of getting a glimpse of what like real constant political violence in the U.S. might look like. Because people talk about like a civil war as if everybody's just going to rise up and go against each other. No. But how long that would last five minutes. Right.

But the Charlie Kirk thing to me was like, oh, that is kind of like the start of what a – Yeah, because then it's going to be, oh, if a week later some Democrat in a similar position, it got shot in the head. and then it happened to going the other way, then it's going to start feeling like we're in a civil war. Well, it's, you know, I guess you could paint it that way. Yeah. It's not a real civil war because I don't think the government will allow anything like that to happen.

It would be unless somebody had enough influence to control one military, you know, branch and somebody controlled another military branch. Yeah. You know, then you'd have a frigging mess. Yeah, I think. They understand how to avoid something like that far better than we understand their understanding of it. You know, like they've got... I understand that you understand.

They've got a lot of measures in place, I think, with which they could control society and not allow it to get there. Who's really run in the country? The shadow government, you believe, is in... I think. I don't think that... I think there's people with a lot of money and a lot of... I'm not, you know, a big conspiracy. I still watch the John of Kennedy assassination

every time it's on. My wife's laughing at me. She always tells me, she's a spoiler. She always tells me how it ends. What I'm saying is people with money and power, they somehow, sometimes they don't want to be up front. They want to be the guys in the background.

We were guys like that in the club. The guys that made the good drugs in the 70s and 80s. Right. They didn't want the power, but they wanted the power. I mean, if me and you had a scam going where we were each making a million bucks a year. How can we do that? Well, I would love to find out also if you got any ideas.

We'll talk about that off the year. If we had that going, the number one thing that we should do is never tell anybody and keep it to our selves. Most people don't really move that way. Usually it seems to find a way out there. They can't resist talking about things. That's why when people say, this happened to that.

And I go, no, it didn't. Because people can't keep their mouth shut. Exactly. People try to tell me that the moon landing was fake. I'm like, okay, so you think that there's tens of thousands of people who all have been keeping their mouth shut about this for all these years? Nobody decided to write a tell-all book or anything. Like, come on.

You know, I think it's funny. Who was it, Buzz Alderman, finally cracked and beat the shit out of somebody. Yeah. I don't blame him. Yeah. It's got to get to you a certain point. And I mean. I mean, he devoted this.

Basically, you're saying, your life was alive. Yeah. And it's like one of the greatest achievements in human history. And like a couple weeks ago, Kim Kardashian was quoted as saying that she doesn't think that it really happened

because she saw some TikToks. Because she saw some TikToks. This is somebody who has access to all of the information that has ever been learned throughout human history through Google. Is she doing it to be provocative? Yeah, that's definitely.

Or does she believe? I think she said it on the TV show. And that's the first question I always ask is, are you doing this to be provocative? Are you serious? It's like paranoia and rumors and conspiracy things. We used to sit in the room, man. And things got so bad towards the end.

We didn't know who was good and who was bad. We had a fishbowl. And everybody, like, I quit using people's names at one point in the club. I would use numbers. Everybody would be assigned a number. You'd be number 236. and you'd know your number. So you can write 236 down

and you'd know people would know. And we had a drawing to search people, you know, would be you'd get searched. You never know when you're going to get searched to prevent people from coming in with a wire. But, you know, we used to, as a leader, I would cheat. If I thought somebody was not good, I'd draw his number two or three weeks in a row

and kind of send a message to them. But, you know, there was a particular individual that didn't seem right, you know. And he used to introduce conversations and then he'd leave his phone and leave the room. You know, we found out where his phone was bugged. And it was a direct mic to the cops. But, you know, conspiracy is easy to breed in people. Yeah. It's very easy.

And the feds used to do it to us. I interviewed, I don't interview many people on my show, but I interviewed Jay Dobbins. Saw that, yeah. And, you know, they did an excellent job. But I think there was also some political play in the ATF going on. I think there was somebody that didn't want Jay Dobbins to be the first agent to infiltrate the Hells Angels. And, you know, they closed the thing down just that he was on the customer. but getting, you know, did he get officially voted in the club or not? You know, there's

controversy about it. So you don't know that he 100% was a full-patch member at any point? Well, he tells the story, he's told me the story. It sounds very credible. What happens is you get voted in locally. Then George votes in bill along with the Ventura members. George goes to the West Coast Officers meeting, announces at the meeting, okay, Bill is now of Ventura Hells Angel. From there, go to the East Coast in the old days and then it would travel.

Nowadays, you go to the officers meeting and West Coast Officers meeting and they put it out. You know, they've got to click everybody's email around the world. You know, Jay Dobbins is a new Hells Angel. It didn't get to that point. But, you know, did they locally believe,

I think they believed, I didn't buy into it. And I told Jay this. Nobody kills somebody and takes a picture of it. And he had a, you know, staged a murder and he was showing people the body he, you know, the guy he had killed, a supposed or alleged Mongol. I mean, I've known a lot of people that are killers and they don't take pictures of their work. Yeah, very rarely. Is someone like Jay, is he looked at as, you know, an enemy of the motorcycle sort of fan club that exists online and stuff?

Yeah, I mean, they really look down upon? Did I interview him? You're a traitor, man. Well, you know what, man? That was Jay's job. Yeah, he wasn't a rat. He was doing what you're supposed to do. He was an ATF agent that took an oath.

And look, I think he was a dedicated guy. He got shot the second day he was at work. He could have sued him and went for the big bucks. He wasn't even trained officially. But he didn't, you know, he wanted a career. And, you know, if you do any background on him, you know, he was a pretty good college ball player. Yeah, yeah. I think he was a team player all the way.

And he left that football scene and joined the ATF and, you know, cost him some bullet holes. Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. Do you think that the sort of outlaw motorcycle scene, is it dying or would you say it's growing? And I don't mean like the overall motorcycle culture. I mean more like the outlaw criminal side of it, the gang side of it. I think that, like I said, I stayed earlier in the show with you that the Hells Angels is not a criminal organization, but it's an organization that has criminals in it. At one time, I think there were more motorcycle riders than criminals, but it may have made a transition. You know, there may be more criminals than motorcycle riders. I don't know, you know.

So it's, you know, me personally, I had a different vision for the club. I think that should have been structured a little bit better. But then on the other hand, the autonomy of each Hells Angel charter has kept the RICO laws from working with us. So, you know, the outlaws leader dies in prison. Second in command, or whatever you want to call him, Spike, he's doing life in prison. Jeff Pike, he's doing life in person. These are all tear-up type organization where there's an international leader.

Right. I mean, it feels like due to a bunch of the different reality shows that have come out over the past few years or like the Sons of Anarchy, influence, all these different things that that probably like kind of kind of inflated the number of people who were involved with this culture for a while, but I would assume that that's kind of coming back down to Earth at a certain point. Well, you know, I think people fail to realize Sons of Anarchy. he was a show. You know, Kurt Sutter tapped into something.

Would he get six seasons? Seven seasons? Sounds about right, yeah. I mean, that's a lot of seasons for a TV program. It was successful. He gets a spinoff, the Mayans. In my 2011 case, I died in 2011 and 2013, we're seating a jury. And I wrote some of the questions out, one of the questions I gave to the, my daughter,

who's my lawyer gave it to the judge, I wanted the jurors asked, do you want sons of anarchy? Right, yeah. And if they answered yes, do you believe the leaders, Jack and I forget the other guy's name, do they know everything

every member's doing? Because to me, that was very important. And, you know, Judge Wu's a smart guy. He was the federal judge I had. And Judge Wu knew we were setting up a appeal. Because every juror said they watched Sons of Ranerke. During the course of the dialogue,

and I don't remember if he called me George or if he called me Mr. Christie, but he looked at me and said, do you watch Sons of Anarchy? And I said, no, Your Honor, I haven't watched it. And he goes, why is everybody in this room watched it but me and you? You know, I just kind of chuckled.

Did you give it a try and you just weren't feeling it? Well, look, the first show, I think they blew up somebody and they shot four guys. I mean, that's not the lifestyle, but I understand. They're trying to entertain people. I watched maybe two episodes of it,

probably like 15 years ago, and I didn't really get fully into it, but I don't really have much of my attention span for that kind of shit, to be honest. Are you ADD, what do they call it? ADD, ADHD? Yeah, for sure, yeah. Yeah.

But for some reason, like a podcast can hold my attention a lot better than a full quality production TV show or movie, which doesn't make a lot of sense. Well, it does because we're jumping subjects. Yeah. You know, and you know, you get burned out on a subject and you make a transition to something else. Yeah. And, you know, you kind of sparks your attention and your interest.

I was that way in school. I was dyslexic. You know, I was gazing out the window all the time. Oh, yeah. I don't. I got nothing to do here. Yeah. This doesn't make any.

I'm constantly having the experience of like falling into a train of thought about something for five to ten minutes and then snapping out of it. and realizing that I didn't comprehend anything that was happening. You know, if I'd be driving to work, listening to a podcast. How did I get here? No, I listen to a podcast, and then 15 minutes later, I realized, oh, I haven't heard anything in the podcast for 15 minutes because I just got stuck in my own brain thinking about something. Something they said in Europe.

It's like a looping video in here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I, you know, I don't know if school's any better now. You know, everybody's got this. homeschooling and i just don't know if it's i don't know if they get anything out of it yeah i mean we've talked about it so much but i feel like okay if the woman is working or you know if both parents are working then it doesn't really seem that realistic you know it's like if if one of the parents is staying home i think it makes a lot more sense but then also your kid needs to socialize

your kid needs to form actual meaningful relationships so you basically have to create like a pod with other like-minded parents, and then what do they do? They hire a teacher for X amount of hours per day or whatever. So you create your own public school. Yeah, and the money basically ends up being about the same as you would spend on a good private school. So if you really want to keep your kid out of that element,

you know, it's possible, but you end up basically sinking a lot of money into things that are kind of mirroring that experience. You know, what's interesting is we talked about my boy earlier, He's diagnosed high-functioning autistic. Right. He wound up with what they call home hospital. It's something they offer.

He found it. I don't know where the hell he found it. Okay. He had a teacher come to the house from the Unified School District. Right. I don't know how he pulled that off, but he had his own private tutor. And really saw a lot of advances in him with this one-on-one type. Of course, he had no social.

social skills. You know? Yeah. And you don't say that to be cruel. That's just the actual facet of autism. Yeah. No, it's, you know, he has no filters. He's learning.

You know, Beverly and I work with him constantly. He's got an older sister who he admires, you know. And, you know, it's interesting conversation. You know, he's my oldest daughter's in her mid-50s. You know, he's 22. So you've got this big span, you know. Yeah. And to watch the two.

children that I raised myself you know but personality differences do you look at the younger generation and does it stand out to you that while you were someone who was super intrigued by by uh you know the streets by the the freedom of being outside and and all these crazy experiences that you were drawn to

that the younger generation just doesn't necessarily exist the same way this is the same generation that has you know been taught since birth to stare into their phone and to basically just go home and watch shit on Netflix when they get home? Does it stand out to you that there's like a big gulf between you and

the way that you grew up in this younger generation? Sure, yeah. I look at young people sometimes and I see them looking at me and they're probably just looking at me going, who's this guy? What's he all about? You know, Beverly and I are walking. Somebody goes by in an electric bike and, you know, comes

close to me and he, you know, I think he's going 50 miles an hour, and I go, Jesus Christ, you know, the guy almost hit me. You know, barely goes, he didn't almost hit. You're an old man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm going bullshit. I go, he was close. Yeah, yeah.

I could feel him. You know, look, you know, I'm an old white guy. It's like people get upset. I've misgendered people before. I don't do it intentionally. Yeah. I mean, that's just what I've been brought up with, man. I don't give a fuck what you do.

I don't care what you do at home. I don't care what you do in the bedroom. I don't care what you do. As long as it doesn't affect me in a negative way, I'm cool with it. Yeah. No, totally. When you were still in that life, was there always a thread of, I feel like any time you have like a group, a social group of white people, that you're kind of always going to be on alert for racist sentiment to be creeping into it.

Was that a constant thing that you were kind of battling against? Well, I'm still battling against it. You know, it's, we don't have any blacks in the club. You know, why? Because we took on the prison guidelines. Right. Race in prisons, you know, they have a color line, and you don't, you don't stray from it. You get killed.

Seems like it works out pretty well for them. Because they talk about it, like, that's how it needs to be in order to maintain order. And when you really get it into your head, like, oh, if a black guy steals from a white guy, They are not allowed to go fight each other. Right. The black guys have to discipline the other black guy, which is like, okay, now you're describing a system in which you're keeping order in a pretty intelligent way, honestly. Right.

And, you know, what happened was there were black members in the club in the 60s. Look at some of the old pictures, man. There's black members, black interactions with people. People started going to prison. The Lynch report came out in 1965, targeting the Hells Angels and other California motorcycle clubs. and people start going to prison. And people came back. And a lot of the things they were talking about,

I never even understood it until I went to prison myself in 1986. And I came back. I was enlightened. Oh, okay, I understand what they're talking about. But I know at the end of the 70s, a lot of guys came back. And one of the things we did,

which the general population might find ludicrous, the deathhead emblem on the back had an open mouth on it. And we argued for six months, the guys that came back from prison said, the mouth needs to be closed. We don't give information. And, you know, it finally took six months, you know.

And we voted on it and we had to close the mouth on the death head. It was a new patch. You know, the patches made three major transitions from the small bumblebee deathhead, the original. Then we went to what we called the Betty Patch. It was a woman in San Bernardino named Betty. She made the patches for all over the world. And then when the guys came back and we made the transition to close the mouth on the deathhead,

it was all the prison guys. They insisted the mouth be closed. Do you think that ultimately, you know, keeping it racially pure and not allowing other racism, was that good or bad for the overall, you know, brand in the long run? And was that just how it had to be? I think that if we would have had some, we would have taken a stronger position and told like the, and became our own kind of tip in prison and said,

this is the way we do it. I think we could have survived, but, you know, people didn't do it. You know, people, they got in there and they fell in line, you know. First thing they ask you when you, you know, I've been, Three times I've been to prison. If the prisoners don't ask you, the cops come in and ask you. Oh, yeah, yeah. They're in on it too, yeah.

Yeah, they're all in on it. Yeah. So, you know, I go to a federal prison, you know, it's immediately understood. I run with the biker car, the white guys, you know, and, you know, some Mexicans and Filipinos and whatnot in it. But the black guys run with the blacks. the, you know, Packer Woods or whatever you want to call them. They run with the white guys.

The Mexicans run with the Mexicans. Yeah, because, like, so growing up in New England, it was like, there was hardcore crews that were basically, like, associated with, like, the punk and metal music scene, right?

And, like, there was a crew in Boston that were... What years is this? Well, I'm talking, like, late 90s, early 2000s. Were they, like, straight-edge guys? Yes, okay, yeah. All right, yeah. And they, and they, They were the hardest dudes, especially the hardest white dudes out, like, or at least that we knew about.

You know, these guys were running shit in Boston. And they actually ended up getting like crazy federal Rico. They did. I remember. Yeah. I think Rolling Stone did a big. Yes, exactly. But I recall.

And the lore about them, like the legend that was always told about him was the scene, the music scene had like, you know, Nazi elements that would kind of creep into the scene. People would come to the shows. I have Swastikas on their show, whatever, and that these were the guys who would beat the fuck out of them and make sure that the scene had no place for that kind of thing because it would make people feel uncomfortable or whatever. And then as the years go by, I start to see, because, you know, that kind of crew,

the motorcycle world is, like, what they upgrade to as time goes by. I started to realize, and, like, then we started to see some pictures of some members of that who would be hanging out at certain motorcycle spots, and there would be swastikas hanging on the wall and shit. And I remember, like, in that world, we were so shocked by that. But you initially know

where that regalia came from. You're just saying it's like World War II memorabilia type of shit. Absolutely. You know, it's spoils of war. I mean, it's just things that armies have, conquering armors have armies had done for years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, the guys came back. Now, my dad

was in the Navy. He was in the Pacific. You know, he brought back Japanese souvenirs. Right. My other buddies, dad was in the, the army he was in the european theater he came back with uh swastika stuff he wanted my stuff real bad i wanted his stuff real bad you know i i wound up with a youth dagger with a eagle and s s bolts on it uh a helmet uh who i've i remember stevie binger uh he's dead now uh he had it chromeed you know he had a nazi helmet yeah and he had it chrome and he was riding wearing it riding riding

Wow. That's a statement. Yeah. It wasn't, hey, I'm a Nazi. Yeah. It was, hey, you guys. You know, just like, you know, people go, they're homosexuals, man. You see them kissing? Yeah.

It was like a big shock thing. Yeah. I mean, our culture, as it is now, kind of forgets about the fact that, like, the sex pistols would be wearing sweatshikas and shit like that. Like, it was just kind of a statement of rebellion at a certain point. You know, I walked in a... a, was like a head shop. It was called Wild Planet, and I took Stevie Jones in there.

And we were walking around. I was showing him all the sex pistol stuff. You know, we were, we gotten, I was involved in protecting the Hells Angel brand. So I was just telling them, you know, they're selling your shit everywhere, man. And he had no idea they were selling all this stuff. But I thought it was funny.

I had Stevie Jones from the sex pistols in this shop, but they're selling all of his posters. They had no. clue even who he was. Yeah. I didn't introduce him to nobody. I just went in there and hung out and later I ran into a couple of the guys that ran it.

And I told him, like, you didn't even know who that guy was, man. Yeah. It's embarrassing. That is crazy. But certain bands, like, you know, like the Friots logo, like, the Friots logo, like, probably way more people that are familiar with the misfits logo or the Dead Kennedy's logo or a Metallica logo or some shit than like familiar with the drummer from any of those bands.

Never mind the singer. No, you know, the, uh, Hell's Angel brand is very, very strong, very recognizable, very powerful brand. You know, we had the same intellectual lawyers as Coca-Cola, MasterCard, and whatnot. Suddenbach, Simbock, and Limbock, and Sutton up in San Francisco. And Coca-Cola and the other brands found out that they were representing us. And basically like me at the Department of Defense, they go choose. Who do you want, you know, do you want to represent the Hells Angels?

Do you want to represent us? We don't want our brand brushing up against the Hells Angels. Right. Was there ever any consideration of the Hells Angel, like, logo and insignia being, like, commercialized and, like, sold in stores and shit like that? Well, it is now. Oh, it is now? Well, on the Internet. I mean, I don't know who's controlling it.

Yeah. You know, I have people, I had a guy write me a few months ago, and he goes, hey, man, I need to ask you something. and I try to answer anybody that writes me as long as it's, you know, reasonable. And he goes, did I just buy your bike? Did I send you $1,000? Because I've lost track of this guy.

Yeah. And I go, look, man, I don't know who you sent $1,000 to, but it had nothing to do with me, and it wasn't my bike. Wow. You know, you got guys that, look, I'm trying to identify where my brother is buried or my cousin is buried but do I really have to pay

500 bucks and join as a supporter before I can, it's, you know, it's classified information. Right. We can't tell you without you being a member. Yeah. But for 500 bucks, we can fix you right up.

Oh, that's hilarious. People are using the brand's strength, a strong brand image to basically do that. Yeah. Now, back in the old days, somebody's infringing on her brand, you know, hey animal, you know, tiny, let's go down here.

We're going to talk to this guy. He's, you know, he's using our brand. You go in there and I used to laugh. I called it out of court settlements, you know. Everything was out of court settlement. We go in there and say, we're not going to do this. Do you understand? And they always understood, you know.

But nowadays, you've got some guy in a computer, I don't know where you think he is, India? Yeah. Probably. It might as well be, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't know where they're at, but they're selling memberships. They're selling Hell's Angel patches, full patches. Somebody took a picture of a guy in a store a couple of days ago and sent it to me and it, you know, Hells Angels world. Well, there's no rocker like that. Yeah. It's a fake patch. Yeah. And it looked pretty good, but it's going to get this guy in trouble if he gets caught wearing it somewhere.

Yeah, no, that's crazy. I mean, it's funny because like I watched the, hang, I get sucked in by these YouTube videos from time to time, but I got sucked into watching one that was like the rise and fall of West Coast Chopper. And I'm watching it and just like realizing like how powerful that logo was and how cool it was and how they sold it though, didn't he? Yeah. But that they mass commercialized it to the point where the logo meant nothing by the time they were done with it.

And the TV show. These are all the things you do that will remove the hardcore aura from something like pretty rapidly, you know. You're absolutely correct. It's like Von Dutch, you know. You ever heard of Von Duttech? Yeah, yeah. Well, I knew Von Dutch.

Yeah. And the first time I really got to interact with Von Dutch, that Satan's slaves and the Hells Angels were at a bar. We were waiting for these guys to show up. We ran them out of the bar. The owner said, if you guys run these guys out of the bar, I'll give you free beer all night. Von Dutz showed up, and somebody hit Bond Dutz across the face

with a little dog collar chain. He had it on a, he was whipping people with it. Oh, shit. And he cut Dutch's cheek open. And Bill Reed, who was a saint's slave at the time, put him up on the bar and sewed him up with a needle and thread because Von Dutch was not leaving because it were free beer. Whoa.

And I mean, that's the kind of guy Von Dutch was. If Von Dutch knew what had happened with his name and logo, I mean, you know, he probably would have turned over his grave. I mean, they were selling von Dutch screwdrivers, shitty screwdrivers for $750. You know, it said von Dutch. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. There's so many examples of that of like the people who are the architects of the culture that we now live in,

who their brands at some point got sold and became total parodies. Like even the Ed Hardy things, the father of like modern tattooing. And you had like a year or two there where it was this really, really cool fashion brand. And then at a certain point, that. you know, influx of like so many people wearing it caused it to become a joke. And now it kind of feels like it's been long enough that I see celebrities wearing it. Like it's it's cooled off so much that they can kind of appreciate it again. You know, it's like in the video, Denny's wearing a Von Dutch shirt.

Oh yeah, that's why I was thinking about Von Dutch the other day. He's wearing a Von Dutch shirt. Look, Von Dutch was a sad story, man. He died in a warehouse in Santa Paul. He was an alcoholic, man. You know, he was taking care of a good friend of mine. He was taking care of all his antique automobiles. And he was still making, you know, he made guns by hand and combination guns and knives.

I mean, he did all kinds of cool stuff, but he died in poverty, man. Yeah. I heard they sold his whole estate or whatever was sold. The name itself was sold to a conglomerate in Japan for $12 million. Is that true? I don't know, you know. Yeah, no, definitely. Somebody going to buy my, any rumors out there?

I mean, it's not the worst idea ever. Yeah, yeah, why not? You know, but the George Christie brand. There you go, man. If there's any buyers out there. But, I mean, the irony is, like, if you had been making shirts with a certain logo for many, many decades, that it, like, you know, it's really just that repetition in people's minds.

And if something existed since that age. You know, I had a T-shirt company. You know what the most popular shirt was? Off. Really? Yeah. I would sit off, big letters. And this is in the 70s, late 70s,

the Hells Angels and Los Angeles gave that to me as a gift. Really? When I got in the club, took it over, started doing it up just out of Ohio, Oakview, California. And find out later, I was under investigation for obscenity considerations. Because I was using the postal service to send this t-shirt around the world that said fuck off

that's amazing we don't hear about obscenity law much anymore but that was like the story of America for a long time all the like the comic book artists that I was into when I was in grade school were like constantly under fire and getting their work stolen out of comic book stores because it was too extreme violent sexual whatever it was yeah I had a tattoo business

so I had like guys that would come in there and just do incredible tattoo work Some of them were working on, like, I'm going to do in a comic book thing. Yeah. Remember, well, maybe you don't. Remember Surfer Magazine? Sounds familiar. You remember Murph the Surf?

Well, he was a little cartoon in every issue they'd have Murph's adventures, and it was like four or five panels. Well, you know, Rick Griffin, he wound up up there in the scene with the Grateful Dead. Like, I'm talking to this guy, and he, you know, one of the band members introduces me to him. And it's the artist, Rick Griffin, he's making all these pop posters. And I'm looking at him, and I go, Murph the Surf. And he was like totally in shock.

He goes, how in the hell did you know that? And I said, well, I used to surf, man. I remember reading your little cartoon things. And he got killed in a car accident. He's an incredible Americana. It's like I went to a Beach Boys concert. Yeah. And I go to the backstage and I say, I've got four or five guys, man.

We want to come in and check out the concert. And Dennis Wilson comes out. He can't believe. Who's that, Brian Wilson's dad? No, it's the drummer. Oh, the drummer was, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. He drowned ultimately. But he was the guy that hung out with Charlie Manson for a while.

Yeah, yeah. And he came out there and said, why would the hell's angels want to come to a Beach Boys concert? Yeah. That's just Americana, man. Just like us. I grew up on the Beach Boys. Yeah. So hardcore.

And I watched, they have a great documentary on Disney Plus about the Beach Boys. And people forget about the sort of like rivalry they have with the Beatles and how the Beatles kind of like changed them so much. And their music just went in so many crazy directions. Remember Jan and Dean? Who was that? Jan and Dean.

Jan and Dean? Jan and Dean. Surf City here week. I think that that was it. I'm looking at my wife. She's like her. We're from the scene. Yeah, yeah.

But Jan and Dean, and he got in a wreck and they wrote a song about it. I know so much shit, I can't keep it sorted in my head. Definitely. Over the years. And that's not because I'm really smart. It's because I've been around here a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You talk about in taking the stuff and then you get caught up in things.

I mean, I'm 42. I feel oldest. I realize that that's offensive to. Oh, not really. I'm going to 100, man. I had an uncle that went to 102. I had another went to 100. You don't got any bad habits left?

No drinking, no smoking? I don't drink. I don't smoke. Don't really. You know, I microdose sometimes on LSD. Nice. But, you know, not an everyday thing. I got like a Vicodin prescription because I have two hip replacements.

I only take them if I absolutely can't handle it. Yeah. Beverly don't want to hang out with me until 100. She's not on board? She's not on board for 100. Oh, she. She looked younger than you. Well, she's actually a year older than me.

Oh, shit. But Beverly and I have known each other since we were 12. Really? Beverly married a good friend of mine. She was married for seven years. I was running the streets crazy. I was in Spain working on a project. And Bob, I was good friends with her and Bob.

And after 57 years, he died, man. So I stepped in, man. Wow. What year was that? Three, four years ago. Oh, okay. Beverly was a witness at my first trial. She was a character witness.

And because she came to bat for George Christie, the leader of the Hells Angels, they froze her bank account, IRS audit, surveillance on her store. he had a high end of women's boutique inventory so beverly and i we got long long history together i mean if talking to you reminds me of anything it's how much i need to avoid getting involved in organized crime because it just doesn't seem worth it doesn't seem like a good idea it's not you know michael francheeses and i laugh yeah i don't know you know you know yeah i've seen you guys talking yeah yeah you know we were in prison together and you know you all by the time the juries journey's over man if you made any money you spent it on bail and lawyers exactly so you might

go to work man i mean getting sued for random bullshit is bad enough then having to deal with the law never mind god i i got friends with fed cases this is a whole other level of bullshit and you know this internet stuff's like you got to make sure you're not doing nothing uh off the wall you know you could be doing something without even realizing doing something these days you text somebody the wrong thing. Yeah, absolutely. I'm real careful what I do. Definitely. Yeah. Okay, man. It was great talking to you. Yeah. I loved it, man. Not exactly the, you know, sort of encyclopedic chronicling of your story, the way that, like, my boy,

Vlad TV did and everything. But definitely, I feel like, you know, it was a good hangout and got to just chat. Well, I enjoyed yourself. You know, sometimes I get locked into a particular era, you know. Yeah, yeah. Some errors are better than other, you know, Like the 70s, man. It was real dangerous. Mm. But I loved it. But you know, one weird thing that kept happening to me while I was like researching this is that

the YouTube sidebar is suggesting other videos. And it kept being these really salacious titles that would give me to click. Like, you know, Hell's Angels, you know, confront biker over a fake patch, yada, yada. And I click on it thinking it's going to be this raw iPhone footage of somebody getting pressed at the gas station. And then it's like a scene from a reality TV show. I know it's when you're talking. They're absolutely hell's angels.

Yeah. And I'm kind of just like, oh, okay. So this scene is being pimped out for content to the max. Yeah. You know, it's bound to happen. The channel, our channel's been around a little bit. We had the Patreon thing and then we started the YouTube thing. You know, I keep it kind of raw.

But, you know, I'm just playing by ear because, you know, this is a whole. whole new, it's a different world, man. Like, you've been in, how long you've been into this? Really, I did BMX content, BMX bikes. That was my thing for like 20 years. But I was doing content online about it for 10 years. So really about 20 years of making a living from doing content online, which sounds crazy.

I don't know if I've ever actually verbalized that, yeah. Well, congratulations. Before I was YouTube, it was blogs. I just writing articles about bikes and shit. You know, it's interesting. I think that. the world has changed so much and I'm thinking I started doing stuff I write books I've got my own books I do this stuff I'm trying to make a historical record of how it really was because I figure a hundred years from now man some guy's gonna probably well this is what really happened I've been researching it and uh that Christy's full of shit

yeah no no I mean that that's the reality of it is that if you don't relentlessly chronicle what's going on within subcultures and these sort of smaller movements and stuff, then it's going to get lost to time because so little of our culture in general gets documented when I think about all the bands I was into in high school and stuff that seemed like they were really important at the time and, you know, in the sort of like most important band. Some shit that like zero percent of the people out there. But like there was all these bands that you know, there was a band called on Broken Wings and this band called Bear You're Dead. And this was just like a scene. I remember that band. I don't remember with the content. I just remember the title.

Because I thought it was a cool title. I throw those out there to just say that there was this whole era of music that I was super invested in. And if somebody had made like a cool documentary or something during that time period, it would be much easier to explain that time period. But there wasn't a lot of media. So it's like it's almost like it didn't exist. I got a great story for when I was in Texas, my last beef. They sent me to Latuna Prison in Texas.

And every week I get a postcard. and like the writing starts on the outside and goes to the center. Sometimes it starts in the center and goes to the outside. And it's Exxena from X, the band X. Okay. And the security intelligence guys in the prison think that she's some sort of Russian...

It's in code? Yeah, they think she's some sort of Russian provocateur or something. Oh, wow. And Exena Serenka, I think is her name. So they're coming up with all these theories, and I finally had to break it down for them. They actually called me in for an interview.

Who is this person? And why are they in a different town every week? And I said, because they're on tour. Yeah, that does sound kind of suspicious from a correctional officer's perspective. Yeah, but anyways. Crazy. George. Great to talk to you, man.

I love talking to somebody who's been through it all and somehow made it out. Well, I'm not out yet. Yeah, well, no, you're out. You're living a good life. I am. I'm feeling good. Been getting Social Security for like two decades almost. That's pretty good, right?

Well, since I was 62. As soon as I was eligible, I took it, man. I figured I'm going to 100. Hell yeah. Well, because you have to make that choice if you want it at, what is it? I forget, but if you wait four years or something, then you get more. Yeah, but you don't get that much more. Yeah, it's not that much, right?

And it wasn't worth it. And I thought, I might be dead in six months. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, you got to take it now, yeah. For sure. All right, man. All right. George Christie, thank you so much.

Everybody out there, go subscribe to his channel. He's pumping out content on a consistent basis. So go watch some of his other interviews, everything like that. No Jumber, coolest podcast, like, comment, and subscribe. We will be reading the comments. Appreciate you.